by Isaac Asimov
The providence that's in a watchful state
Knows almost every grain of Pluto's gold
—Act III, scene iii, lines 196-97
Pluto, as the god of the underworld, was naturally related to gold and to other forms of mineral wealth found in the ground. It was an easy transition to imagine Pluto to be the god of wealth. Actually, the personification of wealth was given the name "Plutus," a close variant of "Pluto."
In later myths Plutus was imagined to be the son of Ceres (Demeter). She is the harvest goddess and the reference to wealth in the grounds can refer to the richly growing gram as well as to the minerals. But then, Pluto (Hades) was the son-in-law of the same goddess, since it was he who carried off Proserpina, Ceres' daughter.
To be pedantically correct, one should speak only of Plutus in connection with wealth, but the mistake is a small one.
… young Pyrrhus. ..
Ulysses further turns the knife in the wound:
But it must grieve young Pyrrhus now at home,
When fame shall in our islands sound her trump,
And all the Greekish girls shall tripping sing,
"Great Hector's sister did Achilles win,
But our great Ajax bravely beat down him."
—Act III, scene iii, lines 209-13
Pyrrhus (also known as Neoptolemus) is Achilles' son, and his birth came about as follows.
Before the expedition to Troy began, Thetis had hidden her young son Achilles on the island of Scyrus, for she knew that if he went to Troy he would win deathless fame but die young. She preferred to have him live a quiet but long life. She had him disguised as a maiden at the court of the Scyran ruler.
The Greeks came searching for him in response to Calchas' warning that they could not take Troy without Achilles. Ulysses cleverly discovered which maiden was Achilles by presenting a display of jewels and finery, among which a sword was hidden. Where the real girls snatched at the jewels, Achilles seized the sword.
Apparently, Achilles also revealed himself to the other maidens in such a fashion as to father a son on one of them. That son, Pyrrhus, remained in Scyrus while Achilles was at Troy.
The accretion of myths and elaborate tales about the central pillar of Homer's story has made hash of the chronology of the affair.
For instance, it is at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis that the Apple of Discord is flung among the guests, and it is immediately afterward that Paris, still a herdsman, must choose among the goddesses. Paris must be a teen-ager at the time and Achilles is not yet born, so Paris must be at least fifteen years older than Achilles.
Eventually, Paris abducts Helen and the Trojan War starts. Now Achilles is old enough to go to war. Let us say he is fifteen at the start of the war and has already left a girl with child. By the time of the last year of the war, in which both the Iliad and Troilus and Cressida are set, Achilles is twenty-four and Paris is thirty-nine. Since Hector is the oldest son of Priam, he must be in his late forties at least.
This is bearable, perhaps, but now consider that Pyrrhus, at Achilles' death in the last year of the war, can scarcely be much more than ten years old. Yet according to the later legends, he is brought to Troy and fights with surpassing bravery in the final battles, to say nothing of being one of the crudest of the sackers at the end (see page I-209).
Such things did not bother those who listened to the tales, of course, and they don't really bother us, either, since the value of those tales does not depend on such mundane matters as precise chronology. However, it is a curiosity and so I mention it.
A valiant Greek …
Achilles is left shaken after Ulysses departs and Patroclus urges his great friend to return to the wars. (This Patroclus also does in the Iliad.) But Achilles cannot yet bring himself to do this. He suggests only that Ajax, after the combat, invite Hector and the other Trojan leaders to visit him under a flag of truce.
Meanwhile, Diomedes has brought Antenor to Troy. He is greeted by Paris and Aeneas and Paris says:
A valiant Greek, Aeneas; take his hand.
Witness the process of your speech, wherein
You told how Diomed, a whole week by days,
Did haunt you in the field.
—Act IV, scene i, lines 7-10
This reflects a passage in the Iliad, but one that is considerably softened in Aeneas' favor. In Book Five of the Iliad, the one dominated by the feats of Diomedes, Aeneas and Diomedes meet in the field and the latter has much the better of it. With a great boulder, Diomedes strikes down Aeneas and would surely have killed him except that first Venus and then Apollo swooped down to save him.
… Anchises' life
Aeneas is all chivalrous graciousness, in the best tradition of medieval gallantry, and says:
Now, by Anchises' life,
Welcome indeed!
—Act IV, scene i, lines 21-22
Anchises is Aeneas' father. Venus fell in love with the handsome young Anchises and had Aeneas by him. She made Anchises promise, however, that he would never reveal the fact that he was the goddess' lover. Incautiously, Anchises let out the secret and was in consequence paralyzed, blinded, or killed (depending on which version of the story you read).
Anchises was far better known to Shakespeare's audience than one might expect from the Greek myths alone. He is the subject of a dramatic story in Vergil's Aeneid. The aged Anchises cannot walk (this fits in with the suggestion that he was paralyzed because of his indiscretion concerning Venus) and was therefore helpless at the time of the sack and destruction of Troy. Aeneas, therefore, bore him out of the burning city on his back, thus setting a greatly admired example of filial love, a love that is reflected backward by having Aeneas swear by his father's life.
By Venus' hand …
Aeneas goes on to combine hospitality and martial threat in courtly manner:
By Venus' hand 1 swear,
No man alive can love in such a sort
The thing he means to kill
more excellently.
—Act IV, scene i, lines 22-24
The mention of Venus' hand makes sense in light of the events in Book Five of the Iliad. When Aeneas lies felled by Diomedes' boulder, sure to be killed if the gods did not intervene, Venus (Aeneas' mother) flew down from Olympus to save him. The furious Diomedes cast his spear even at the goddess and wounded her in the hand. She fled, screaming, and it was only when the much more powerful Apollo took her place that Diomedes was forced to retire. Thus, Aeneas was swearing by that part of his mother which had been hurt on his behalf.
… Some say the Genius
On the very morning after their night together, the news comes to Troilus that he must give up Cressida and send her to the Greek camp.
Brokenhearted, Troilus and Cressida vow eternal fidelity. Troilus gives Cressida a sleeve (an arm cover which in medieval times was a separate article of clothing, not sewn to shirt or robe) and Cressida returns a glove.
The deputation waits outside for Cressida to be turned over to them, and when Aeneas calls out impatiently, Troilus says:
Hark! You are called. Some say the Genius
Cries so to him that instantly must die.
—Act IV, scene iv, lines 50-51
To the Romans, every man had a personal spirit (the equivalent of what we would call a guardian angel) which they called a "Genius." Every woman, similarly, had her "Juno," and Genius may be a masculine form of Juno. To this day, we speak of a man who is supremely gifted as a "genius," though we forget that by this we mean that the divine spirit is speaking through him with particular effectiveness.
Hosts of superstitions naturally arose concerning these Geniuses. It would warn the person it guarded of imminent death, for instance, as Troilus says here.
Fie, fie upon her
Cressida is brought to the Greek camp, where she is suddenly a different person. She has been flirtatious and a little hypocritical with Troilus, teasing and a little ribald with Pandarus, but nothing so bad. In the Gre
ek camp, however, she is suddenly a gay wanton, joking with the Greek leaders and eager to kiss them all-even Nestor.
Only the clear-eyed Ulysses refuses, insulting her openly, and saying to Nestor after she leaves:
Fie, fie upon her!
There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip;
Nay, her foot speaks. Her wanton spirits look out
At every joint and motive of her body.
—Act IV, scene v, lines 54-57
Without warning, Cressida is pictured as an utterly worthless woman.
Why so sudden a change? Surely there must have been room to express Cressida's side of the matter in at least one speech. She is torn away from home, and from love at the very moment of that love's height, with only her father at her side, frightened, uncertain, weak. Chaucer, in his version, presents Cressida's dilemma far more sympathetically and lets us pity her in her fall. Shakespeare only lets us despise her.
Might we speculate that Shakespeare is being savage to Cressida and showing her in the worst possible fashion because he wishes to make a point outside the play?
The play seems to have been performed first in 1602, and Shakespeare may have been writing it in 1600-1. Is there a possibility, then, that Shakespeare was influenced by a dramatic event that took place in the time when he was writing the play?
Shakespeare's patron, Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton (see page I-3), with whom Shakespeare may have been on the closest possible terms, was himself a member of the faction of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex.
About the time that Shakespeare was beginning his career as a dramatist, Essex had become the favorite and lover of Queen Elizabeth I (who was thirty-three years older than he was).
Essex longed for a successful military career, though the sensible Queen saw that although he might be suitable for a lover, he was not suitable for a general. In 1596, however, he finally persuaded her to allow him to lead an expedition to Spain (with which England was still carrying on a desultory war, a war of which the defeat of the Armada in 1588 had been the high point). Southampton accompanied him on this expedition.
The expedition had a certain success, for the city of Cadiz was seized and sacked. Elizabeth I did not consider the results of the expedition to have been worth its expense, however-she was always a most careful lady with a shilling-and Essex did not receive the credit that he (and his faction, including Southampton and, presumably, Shakespeare) felt he deserved.
Essex, however, became more of a war hawk than ever, having tasted the delights of victory. In 1599 he talked the reluctant Elizabeth (who by now was beginning to feel he was becoming entirely too ambitious to be a safe subject) into letting him lead an expedition into Ireland to put down a rebellion there. Again Southampton left with him, but this time Elizabeth called him back, to his deep discomfiture.
The Essex faction had high hopes for the Irish adventure, and Shakespeare, writing Henry V while Essex was in Ireland, refers to the expedition most flatteringly in the chorus that precedes Act V of that play (see page II-508).
The expedition, however, proved a complete fiasco and Essex returned to England in absolute fury at what he, and his faction, believed to be the machinations of the anti-Essex group at the English court. It seemed to them that they had deliberately intrigued against Essex to prevent him from achieving military renown.
In desperation, Essex began to plot rebellion. Southampton arranged to have Shakespeare's play Richard 11 revived. It dealt with the deposition of an English monarch (see page II-304) and Elizabeth did not miss the point. Both Southampton and Essex were arrested, tried for treason, and convicted in February 1601. Essex was, indeed, executed on February 25, but Southampton's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and, after Elizabeth's death in 1603, he was released.
It is tempting to think that Shakespeare wrote Troilus and Cressida under the deep shadow of the misfortunes of Essex and Southampton.
To him, the expedition against Troy may have seemed very much like Essex's expeditions against Cadiz and, later, against Ireland. These expeditions were fought for what seemed to Shakespeare, perhaps, to be a most ungrateful and worthless woman who was oblivious to the sufferings of her faithful servants and whom he may have envisioned as amusing herself with Essex's rival, Sir Walter Raleigh, while the faithful Essex was suffering in the field. Could this be why Shakespeare draws Helen as so contemptible (see page I-111)?
The factions that disrupted the Greek effort on the fields of Troy were magnified by Shakespeare, perhaps as a bitter satire on the factions at the English court that had, in the view of the Essex faction, stabbed Essex in the back.
And Cressida, of course, would then be another aspect of Elizabeth- that false woman who had betrayed her lover and sent him to the gallows. Could Shakespeare have been working on the fourth act just when the execution of Essex came to pass (with Southampton still in prison)? Could he have turned to his pen for revenge on Cressida, making no effort whatever to explain her or excuse her? Did he want her defection to be as bare and as disgraceful as possible so that Ulysses' "Fie, fie upon her!" might reflect as strongly as possible upon the Queen?
The youngest son…
At last we are ready for the duel between Hector and Ajax. Since Ajax is a relative of Hector's (here again is the confusion between Ajax and Teucer) it is agreed that the fight is not to be to the death.
While they prepare, Agamemnon asks the name of a sad Trojan on the other side. Ulysses answers:
The youngest son of Priam, a true knight,
Not yet mature, yet matchless …
—Act IV, scene v, lines 96-97
It is Troilus being described here, in the very highest terms. The praise has nothing directly to do with the play, and one cannot help but wonder if Shakespeare intends it to refer to the betrayed and executed Essex; if it is his epitaph for that rash person.
This is an example, by the way, of the curious way in which in Troilus and Cressida the combatants on either side don't seem to know each other until they are introduced, although they have presumably been fighting each other for years.
This is true in the Iliad as well. In Book Three of that poem, when Paris and Menelaus are getting ready for their duel, Priam and his councilors sit on the wall and view the Greek army. Helen is there too, and Priam has her identify several of the Greek champions: Agamemnon, Ulysses, Ajax. Surely after nine years of war Priam ought to know these people. Perhaps the war was much shorter in the earliest legends (and, for all we know, in truth) but grew longer to accommodate the numerous tales added to the primitive story by later poets-and perhaps Homer's tale was tailored to correspond, unavoidably leaving inconsistencies as a result.
Not Neoptolemus …
The duel between Ajax and Hector is fought and ends in a draw and in a graceful speech by the chivalrous Hector, as does the similar duel in Book Seven of the Iliad (where, however, Hector clearly gets the worse of the exchanges).
Ajax, who is not very good at speaking, manages to express his disappointment at not having beaten Hector definitely.
To which Hector, rather vaingloriously, replies:
Not Neoptolemus so mirable,
On whose bright crest Fame with her loud'st "Oyes"
Cries, "This is he!" could promise to himself
A thought of added honor torn from Hector.
—Act IV, scene v, lines 141-44
The only Neoptolemus in the Greek myths was the son of Achilles (see page I-116), who was also known as Pyrrhus, meaning "ruddy," the latter possibly being a nickname. This is possibly an anachronism on Shakespeare's part, for Hector could scarcely be speaking of a boy who had not yet appeared in the war-or else it is Achilles who is being referred to rather than his son.
/ knew thy grandsire.. .
The Trojan leaders are then invited to the Greek camp under conditions of truce (as Achilles had asked, see page I-116). There they greet each other with careful courtesy, and old Nestor says to Hector:
&n
bsp; I knew thy grandsire,
And once fought with him.
—Act IV, scene v, lines 195-96
Hector's grandfather was Laomedon, who built the walls of Troy. According to legend, he built them with the aid of Poseidon and Apollo, who were condemned to earthly labor by Zeus for their rebellion against him (which Thetis and Briareus thwarted, see page I-86). When the walls were complete, Laomedon refused the gods their pay and in revenge they sent a sea monster to ravage the Trojan coast.
The Trojans had to sacrifice maidens periodically to the monster, and eventually Laomedon's own daughter, Hesione, was exposed to him. She was rescued by Hercules. It was when Laomedon broke his word again and refused certain horses which he had promised in return for the rescue, that Hercules sacked the city and took Hesione captive. He also killed Laomedon and all but one of his sons. The sole surviving son was Priam.
Nestor is not recorded as having fought with Laomedon (either for him or against him, in either meaning of the phrase). There is, however, an odd coincidence here. Hercules is also recorded as having made war against Neleus, Nestor's father, to have slain Neleus and all but one of his sons and to have placed the one survivor, Nestor, on the throne of Pylos. In this respect, Priam and Nestor had a good deal in common.
… your Greekish embassy
Hector also greets Ulysses (who has cleverly cut off what promises to be a flood of Nestorian reminiscence) and says:
Ah, sir, there's many a Greek and Troyan dead,
